10th of April 2014

Where To Start If You’re Lost With Women, Part 1: Developing the Right Mindset

To start this site, I asked for questions from guys about what their issues with women were, and I saw the same thing over and over: the vast majority of guys are completely lost with all things surrounding sex, women and dating.

The questions were not bad or stupid, not at all. They were just the sorts of things you ask when you don’t even know what to ask; when you’re not even wrong. When you’re so lost, you don’t even know where to start.

So that’s what I’m going to do to launch this site: Explain the absolute fundamentals of sex and dating, for guys who are totally, completely lost.

[If you aren’t lost–if you have some success with women but you want to know more and understand more–that’s great. This probably will be obvious stuff to you, maybe even boring. You have plenty to learn, and we’ll get to you and your issues eventually, but this is like a triage situation: I gotta help the ones who need the most help first, and a lot of the readers here need this sort of basic help.]

Part 1: Change Your Mindset

If you’re totally, completely lost with all things about women, then the first thing we have to address is your mindset. We have to set the proper frame for you, so that all the new information we teach you can be processed and used correctly.

How you think about yourself and your relationship to women is the fundamental building block upon which everything else rests, so we’re going to start there.

Think of this post as the foundation of a house. You never really see it, and all you have to do is get it right once, and you never have to think about it again. But get it wrong, and it’s a constant problem that eventually destroys everything above it. So let’s get your frame right:

1. It’s OK to be lost:

Take a deep breath, and relax. I’m serious. No matter how bad it is right now–and for some of you, it is REALLY bad–it won’t be like this forever. I hate to sound cheesy, but this is the truth: it will get better. You will improve yourself, you will get better with women, you will find girls that like you, and you will even have relationships with them. It may take time, but it will happen.

In a very real sense, it’s not your fault that you’re lost. Unless you were lucky enough to have a person in your life that taught you about dating and women, there’s no way you for you to know what to do. Our society does not teach men how to properly deal with women (incidentally, they don’t teach women how to deal with men either). If you weren’t lucky enough to have parents or siblings or someone who taught you those things, you didn’t get it. Our societal institutions give no guidance, no rules, and no clear ideas on what you should and shouldn’t do in relationships, sex and dating. And the images and resources that do exist–porn, romantic comedies, PUA sites, etc–are at best unhelpful, and at worst, toxic and terrible.

And I know that to some of you, it can feel like everyone but you is doing it right, having a great time, fucking every girl they meet, and a total baller. I can tell you from a position of absolute authority, that is NOT true. Everyone is lost, alone, afraid, and insecure that they’re the only ones. Yes, even me.

So don’t blame yourself. No one taught you what to do, how could you know? You couldn’t.

[NOTE: Unlike many manosphere sites, I’m not going to spend any time here dissecting or explaining why this is. The reasons why society is so broken in this regard are important, but to be honest, they don’t matter. At least not right now. At this moment, I care only about helping you get better with women, not about complaining or ranting about large, complex societal issues, none of which help you meet your direct, immediate needs. Once you’re good with women, then we’ll spend time understanding how our society came to be so broken in how it teaches men and women about relationships, sex and dating, and what we can do to help change that for future generations.]

2. You failed, but you’re not a failure:

This is an EXTREMELY important point: Failing, even failing miserably over and over, does not make you a failure. It just means that you have failed.

Wait, what? I promise, this is not a contradiction. Let me explain:

A failure is an identity. It’s who you are. For example, “That guy is a total failure as a human.”

Failing is an action. A temporary state. Something that you have done, but not who you are. For example, “Man, he failed badly on that test.”

Everyone fails at something. Take me for example: I have failed at almost everything I’ve tried in my life, at least a few times. Girls have rejected me, publishers have rejected my writing, the movie made from my first book tanked. There are numerous specific examples of me failing at things.

But I’m not a failure as a person. Not remotely. I’ve had a ton of success with women (however you define success), I’ve got an amazing life, sold millions of books, and I’m rich enough to never have to answer to anyone again. I’ve been massively successful at almost all the things that I value in life.

One of my business heros, Mark Cuban, says it best (I’m paraphrasing him): “You can fail 1000 times at business, but if you succeed once, you’re a success at business. The failures don’t matter, they are just acts, things that happened, not what matters.”

I’m not telling you this so I can then tell you to just randomly hit on every woman and disregard your failures. No. Spray and pray is not a dating strategy I will ever endorse; it’s humiliating and demeaning to you, and annoying to women. It’s much deeper then a mating strategy.

Here’s why this is important to you:

Instead of seeing their failures with women as a specific acts, lots of guys see their inability to succeed with women as representative of something about themselves. They see a failed act as meaning that they themselves are failures. That’s their identity. Once that happens, continued failure is a virtual certainty, because that’s what they think are–failures.

Why does this matter? And what does this mean to you and dating? How you see yourself defines the realm of possibility for what you can and cannot do. In many ways, your mindset determines your success, long before you even start the attempt. If you believe you can do something, your chances are good. If you don’t think you can do something, your chances are bad.

This is not self-help bullshit, this is an empirically demonstrated fact; positive belief is one of the main predictors of success. For example, how many times have you started talking to a girl, and things were going well, and then you did something stupid, you immediately got nervous, freaked out, made things 100x worse, and then crashed and burned? What’s going on psychologically is very complicated, but in a basic sense, your small mistake triggers a panic because your identity in your head–the way you think of yourself–is “failure.”

If your identity is “failure” you don’t think you can change; you don’t think any result other than failure is possible, so either you see failure as inevitable–and unconsciously bring it about–or, worse, you just don’t even try. Your fate is sealed even before you start talking to the girl.

Remember: Failing is a specific result, limited to specific act. Everyone fails. A failure is an identity, a way you think about yourself.

Don’t think of yourself as a failure. Identities are hard to change and define who you are.

Think of yourself as someone who has failed at certain things. Specific results can be changed, as long as you keep trying.

[There is a TON of amazing psychological research that shows this, we’ll get deeper into it as we post more about this specific issue. If you really want to read about it now though, start with Carol Dwecks book, Mindset.]

3. You have the genetic ability to succeed:

Even if you are the saddest, most ridiculously pathetic guy I’ve ever seen with women, I still KNOW you have the genetic ability to succeed on some level in the mating game.

How can I know this? Well, I can state with 100% certainty that you come from an unbroken line of men who have successfully mated with women. Otherwise you would not be here. Every single direct male ancestor of yours had at least one child, with at least one woman. Something in your genes has worked for countless generations, so you have the raw material to succeed relationships with women.

This is not a small thing. According to the best calculations of geneticists, about 80% of the women who have ever lived have had children. But only about 40% of the men who have ever lived had children. You come from that 40%. That means you have it in you, literally, to succeed at the mating game.

Look, I’m not telling you that you can be the greatest guy ever with women. That’s not true. I hate the self-help scammers who sell people on the idea that everyone can be a star–that’s bullshit. Everyone can’t be a star. Everyone can’t be a hero. That’s the very definition of a star or a hero; they do things other people cannot.

But here’s the cool part: you don’t have to be a star to do well with women. You don’t have to be a star to find a great woman and have a great relationship with her. Or to find lots of women and have lots of short relationships or hook-ups with them. Whatever your goals are, you don’t have to be great; you just have to be good enough, and that you can definitely learn how to do.

4. If other guys can get girls, so can you:

If you’re still unsure about this–that you can succeed with women–then think about it like this: how many idiotic losers have you seen who get girls? A lot right? That’s your competition! You just have to be better than them! That’s not hard.

The reality is, most guys suck. When I hear women say things like, “There are no good guys out there,” I actually agree with them for the most part (now, the reason WHY there are no good guys is a different discussion).

I even apply this logic to myself. Sometimes I look around and wonder to myself, “How the fuck do I do so amazingly well with women? I shouldn’t be doing this good, I kind of fucking suck.”

And then I look at my competition–all the loser guys we’re talking about–and I quickly realize the answer: Most guys suck. I’m not great, I am just way better than they are…THAT’S why I do so well, I look great in comparison to all these other guys.

Well, why can’t you be better than at least some of the losers out there? You can be. The reality is that if you have the education and means to read this website, then there are millions of men who are in far worse situations than you who have succeeded with women. You can do what they do. You don’t have to be the best guy on earth to do well with women. You just have to be better than them, and that is not a high bar to hit.

5. Even if you think you’re a loser, that can easily change:

I know a lot of guys read that last part and thought to themselves, “Yeah, well what if I’m one of those losers? Then what?”

Then you change so you’re not one anymore.

We’re going to cover this in depth in the book and the site, in fact probably 60%+ of what we cover will be this subject: How can you change yourself in ways that you are comfortable with, but also make you more attractive to women. In effect, how can you stop being a loser?

When women say “There are no good guys out there,” what they are saying is that the guys they interact with don’t meet their desired standards. It’s not hard to do that. It’s not hard to understand what women want, and to be attractive to women. Yes, it’s hard to be the most attractive guy or to get hundreds of girls to swoon over you. It’s not hard to make yourself attractive enough to have good women who want to be with you.

In fact, the coolest thing is that process in effect, is the same process that makes you an awesome guy–gets you in shape, gets you feeling great, gets you motivated and successful. We’ll walk you through all of it, but the point is a simple one:

No matter where you are now, not matter how pitiful, you can drastically improve, and that improvement will get you to the point where you can have relationships with women.

The Takeaways:

1. It’s OK if you’re currently lost with women, no one taught you how to succeed. It’s not your fault.

2. Failing with women does not make you a failure. It means you’ve tried, which is good, and success can only come to those who keep trying.

3. You can succeed. Every ancestor you’ve ever had succeeded with women, so you have the genetic ability as well.

4. Lots of guys who are worse than you have figured it out. If they can, so can you.

5. No matter where you are now, not matter how pitiful, you can drastically improve, and that improvement will get you to the point where you can have relationships with women.

Feedback:

This is an ongoing, developing series, and we are testing how the presentation of this information is resonating with our readers (you). Our goal is to help guys get the relationships they want with women, so please feel free to give us feedback:

Does it make sense? Are you learning from it? What did you not understand? What do you want to know more about? Does this explain mating in way you can relate to?

Any feedback you have, either good or bad, I’d love to hear. Email me here: [email protected]